STTR grants for MabVax Thera

MabVax Therapeutics, a privately-held, US company focused on the development and commercialization of novel immunotherapies for the  treatment of cancer, has received two grant awards from the National  Cancer Institute under the Small Business Technology Transfer Program  (STTR) totaling $400,000. The first award is aimed at supporting a pilot  trial with a tetravalent conjugate vaccine against small-cell lung  cancer and the second at the generation of human monoclonal antibodies  from immunized patients.

Earlier this year, MabVax completed two licensing agreements with the  Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, the research arm of the  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, for exclusive development and  commercialization rights to multiple vaccines against selected recurrent  cancers. MSKCC has already initiated Phase I clinical trials with two  different vaccines to demonstrate immunogenicity and tolerability in  sarcoma and breast cancer. The first STTR award will support work on a  Phase I small-cell lung cancer trial to be conducted by MSKCC early next  year, with MabVax providing laboratory analysis support. The second will  be for MabVax' efforts to isolate human antibodies from immunized  patients participating in those Phase I studies.